The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1887-09-21
The Unmarried Girls.

A Boston newspaper writer recently
met in a New England town woman
who had kept for number of years
record of the girls graduated from the
high school of the village and their
lives after leaving school. The first
striking fact in this record was the
growing number of those who remained
unmarried. Eleven years have elapsed
since the last of the classes was gradu-
ated, and it is fair, therefore, to assume
that their lives are well marked out by
this time. The first class recorded
had nineteen members, ten of whom
are unmarried of the second, ten out
sixteen are unmarried; in the third,
eighteen out of twenty-one, and so on.
Out of a total of ninety-nine graduates
siXty-one are still single, twenty-seven
are married, and eleven, it is of some
interest to add, are dead of consump-
ton, a prey to the bitter winds of the
New England winter. OF the siXty-one
unmarried graduates twenty-one are
school-teachers, three are type-setters,
one is a proof-reader, one is head dress
maker in dry-goods house, four are
dressmakers, three music-teachers, one
has studied medicine and fifteen WORK in
shoe-shops. Only twelve, or hardly
one-fifth of the whole number, are
classed as stay-at-homes." These
evidently did not need to work for a
living, and it is fair to assume that a
good proportion at least had home
duties which would take the place for
them of more active career outside.
Statistics of this kind are usually re-
ceived with an air that implies COM
miseration for so many young women
who have failed to find husbands. But is
it true that the old theory that marriage
is indispensable to woman, while it is
perhaps only desirable for a man, is
losing some of its force? We are in
clined to believe that these figures, and
many like them which could no doubt
be had for the trying, prove it. Mar
riage is of course the natural state of
both sexes, and so long as woman is
:" the weaker vessel" and 50 long as
the affections are the dominating force
of her haracter-that is to say, so long
as men and women eXist-marriage
will seem more desirable to women,
taking the general average of mankind &,
than to men. But the signs of the
times are lost on those who do not see
that women are gaining day by day
a broader and firmer foothold of their
own, and Independent of men, in mod
ern life. 1t is no longer universally
conceded. as it was once, that woman's
career necessarily begins and ends in
the home. Women are pushing them
selves into great number of trades
and occupations where their presence
would not have been tolerated a gem
Grafton ago. This is perhaps more
strikingly true in England than here.
A table published some years ago of
the number of women in England fol-
lowing occupations ola light and agree
able kind-such as post-otice clerks
and the like-made a surprising show
ing. The New England list given above
is another instance in point. Four
tifths of these girls are engaged in act
i've and useful careers. No such pro-
portion, we venture to say, would have
been seen in that section twenty-five
years ago. 1t would be mistake to
ascribe all this to the pressure of ne
cessity. Women are seeking occupa-
tons more and more because there is
growing feeling of dissatisfaction
among the sex with the inert and de-
pendent attitude too often assigned to
them in the economy of life. They
are forcing their way into the colleges,
studying professions, competing with
men in many occupations where their
greater quickness and readiness give
them the advantage, not because they
feel in each case the need of making
living but often for the same reason
that men do-because they want Ca
reer, the consciousness of self-reliance
and independence. 1t is not an unusual
thing for such women to marry, some
times abandoning their occupations
sometimes continuing them. But, how
ever this may be, the movement is one
toward truer equality of the Sexes
Exchange.